Verse Ain't As Big As You'd Think
by scpeede
Summary: In a 'verse where Riddick joins the crew of Serenity, where Jayne's more than a merc, where River's just this side of crazy, and where Wash lives. That's right, folks, Wash lives.


Warning: Lengthy author's note ahead. You have my express permission to skip down. The Chinese I used in this chapter is at the bottom of the note.

So I figure you clicked on this mostly because I told you Wash would live. I wasn't lying to you. He does. If you're anything like me, when Book died, you were like 'That's so sad. I'm going to miss hit witty one-liners.' But when Wash died, you found yourself magically transported to a darkened alleyway where it was pouring rain and you were on your knees yelling 'NOOOOOO!' to the heavens. And, in your grief, you push all the Firefly characters towards their creators and tell them 'No! Anyone but Wash!'

Which is when you realize exactly what you've just done.

You've just given Joss Whedon, Killer of Lovable Characters, free reign with their lives.

You quickly backtrack. You pull them back to you and go through them. 'No, you can't have Kaylee. She's Kaylee. That's almost as tragic as Wash dying. Can't have Mal; he's the captain. Mal's needed. And you can't kill off Inara before her and Mal get together. It's just rude. Can't kill of River. She's River, and kind of why there's a show to begin with. What about Simon?' But you think about it and realize you can't kill off River's brother. Or Kaylee's boyfriend. And nobody wants Kaylee to cry. You move to Jayne. 'Can't kill off Jayne, everybody loves Jayne.' And you can't kill off Zoe because she's Wash's wife (and probably wouldn't let you kill her off in the first place). That'd just be... well, they haven't created a word for how cruel it is to do such a thing to Wash. And you can't offer up Book, not that you would, because he dies too. So you offer the Operative, only to realize he's already dead. Then it hits you. 'Badger! You can have Badger! Except... I kind of like Badger.' And you're pulling Badger close when it hits you: the perfect trade. 'Take Atherton Wing! Take him instead of Wash!'

Yeah.

I might have put a little too much thought into that...

The point is, he's going to live. No grisly deaths for Hoban Washburne.

Anyway, I started this AN to warn you that there's an OC. Before you ask, no, I did not go inserting myself into the world of Firefly or Riddick (I am _so_ not badass enough to survive either universe). That is not why this OC was created. This OC was created because I like Jayne and and wanted him to have somebody to sex and not be all alone.

...And I just realized that was the reasoning behind the other story I posted up here.

Moving on!

So, the plan was to have a River/Riddick pairing (because it's awesome and hilarious and just _works_ ), all the usual pairings, and create this OC for Jayne... Only Jayne and the OC refused to get together. They pretty much became siblings and things got... weird. And seven kinds of icky. So I brainstormed and brainstormed and revised and revised and they still refused to cooperate. So, in an act of complete desperation (mostly because the Muse for this one was beating me upside the head shouting 'Write, gorramit, write!'), I swapped the pairings around. As you know, you can't split up Zoe and Wash or Mal and Inara (if they would just get their act together). I couldn't split up Simon and Kaylee because, even though I could put Kaylee with Jayne, I couldn't put Simon with River (for obvious reasons), and I couldn't put Simon with the OC because their mutual hatred of each other was practically cemented in by this point. So I left the usual pairings, put River with Jayne, and the OC with Riddick. And I just knew it was going to end badly. So very badly. But then the little bastards ran with it. They ran with it straight into a field of plot bunnies where they frolicked (okay, so maybe Riddick didn't frolic) and I had so many ideas I could barely get them down on paper before I was struck by the next.

This is what came of it.

* * *

Chinese

mèi mei: younger sister  
gē ge: older brother  
hún dàn: bastard  
chŭn huò: blockhead, idiot (really, it just seemed perfect for the line)  
fù yī cáo: to enter hell

* * *

Jayne's fist came down heavily on the door. "Grey! You in there? Kaylee's ready to go." He frowned when he didn't get an immediate answer. "Gorram women, always takin' their ruttin' time an' makin' us menfolk wait on 'em." He knocked again. "Grey?"

Jayne sighed and rested his considerable bulk against the wall, waiting as patiently as he knew how—which was actually pretty damn patient. A sniper had to be. At six foot five and tapping a boot against the grating, he didn't much look like a man who could hide himself away and lie in wait for a target. But there were a lot of ways that Jayne's appearance didn't match the man he was. He had a hard look in his blue eyes and his face seemed to hold a permanent scowl. He kept his hair trimmed relatively short and his beard scruffy. You couldn't count the number of guns he kept hidden around the ship and on his person. Jayne certainly didn't look like the kind of man who would wait on anyone, woman or not. But there was a good man hidden under the gruff exterior.

The door slid open, a young woman stepping out into the narrow hallway. Grey's eyes immediately moved to sweep the area, more out of habit than suspected threat. Her dark hair was pulled back in a braid to keep it out of the way. Though her build was on the slimmer side, the top of her head came up just past Jayne's chin. Her own chin had a slight cleft that matched the firm set of her jaw. A brown leather jacket was draped over one arm, leaving the other free to adjust the harness she wore every time she stepped foot off ship.

"We still tryin' to find a Kaywinnet-approved compression coil?" Grey asked as she made sure that a gun fit snugly into the holster under her arm.

"Thinkin' that's what she said," Jayne answered as the duo made their way to the cargo bay.

Grey slid into her arms into the jacket, and did up a few of the buttons. "If she weren't so picky, we'd a had one'a them things weeks ago."

He shrugged. "You know how Kaylee is 'bout _Serenity_ an' her parts."

"I know. Just sayin', is all." She moved onto another subject as they reached the bay. "Mal an' Zoe gone to see Badger?"

"Yeah. Maybe the lil' pissant'll have a job for us."

"Even if he does, wouldn't bank on it bein' a high-payin' one. Man's got an extreme dislike'a Mal."

Jayne didn't bother to hide his snort. "So's most'a the folk we deal with, mèi mei."

Before Grey could answer, a smiling strawberry blonde bounded down the catwalk stairs and stopped in front of them. "Ya'll ready to go?" she asked, tilting her head back to look up at them.

"Just waitin' on you, Little Kaylee." Jayne replied as the trio headed down the ramp in search of a part for _Serenity_.

Two hours later, after much searching and some heated haggling on Kaylee's part, they were the proud owners of a shiny new compression coil. As they were heading back to the ship, Jayne came up between the two women and wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders, guiding them slightly to the right. "I say we celebrate."

"Celebrate?" Kaylee asked.

Grey turned thoughtful. "We _have_ been lookin' one'a them things for weeks now."

"Exactly!" Jayne steered them a bit more forcefully toward a bar. "After all that hard work, we deserve a reward!"

The mechanic wasn't convinced. "I don't know..."

"My treat." Jayne wheedled.

"Well, what're we waitin' for?" Kaylee gripped their arms tightly and dragged them through the door of a dark and dank hole-in-the-wall tavern, her companions stumbling along behind her at the unexpected show of force from the little mechanic.

Jayne ushered his girls toward a table in the back corner while he walked up to the bar. He smacked down a handful of coin, "Two beers an' a ginger ale."

The barkeep gave him a curious look for the last part of the order, but took the money and set the drinks on the counter. Jayne studiously ignored the look, picking up the drinks and heading toward the table his girls had claimed. Without needing to ask, he knew that Grey had been the one to pick the small table as it put her and Kaylee's backs to the wall. Normally, he wouldn't trust anybody to watch his back—and not in a bar like this—but Grey was different.

A short while later, Jayne was regaling the girls with a story about the time his brother Mattie got stuck in a tree while trying keep from being punished.

Kaylee looked at Jayne, eyes wide in disbelief. "Ya didn't!"

He nodded gleefully as Grey hid a giggle behind her beer.

The mechanic seemed torn between scolding the gunhand and laughing outright. "Jayne Cobb, you're a horrible gē ge!"

One merc from a nearby table perked up, turning in his seat to look at Kaylee. "Did I hear you say 'Jayne Cobb'?"

The laughter at their table stopped abruptly, Jayne cursing under his breath as Grey slid a hand nearer to the gun on her hip.

Kaylee just looked around confused. "What's goin' on?"

That was apparently more than enough confirmation for the merc, who stood and signaled for his buddies to do the same. He stepped up behind Jayne and pulled a gun as four mercs surrounded the table, others waiting in their seats to see how the chips fell before making a move. "Jayne Cobb. You're a hard man to track down."

Jayne met Grey's eyes over the table. "That so? Then I reckon you hún dàns ain't even been lookin'."

The bar fell silent as the merc behind Jayne held a gun to the back of his head, the click of the hammer echoing loudly in the sudden stillness.

And then the bar exploded into action.

Jayne and Grey were on their feet simultaneously, chairs clattering onto the floor. Grey was up and pulling Kaylee out of her chair while tipping the table onto its side, pushing the little mechanic down behind it and leaping into the fray.

Jayne pushed the man's gun up and away before twisting the wrist that held the revolver until it snapped. The merc fell to his knees with a pained shout as Jayne emptied the gun's chambers and tossed it aside. He caught another merc in the chin with an uppercut that took him off his feet. "Thinkin' we're outnumbered, méi mei!"

"Case you ain't noticed, gē ge, we're _always_ outnumbered!" Grey retorted as she broke a chair over a man's head.

Her brother in all but blood ducked as he was nearly brained by a bottle of whiskey, eye catching on the label. "Hey! Ya don't go wastin' good whiskey!" He punched the merc square in the face, bone and cartilage cracking under his fist. "Gorram heathen."

Grey took a moment to shove a merc away from Kaylee's hiding place, eyes narrowing as she glanced toward the bar. "Jayne! Barkeep's wavin' the feds!"

Jayne cursed loudly, as did a few other mercs. Luckily, most of the mercs cleared out at Grey's warning, the payday they were after not worth a run-in with the Alliance.

"Still outnumbered!" Jayne called to her. A half dozen men had them surrounded, not put off by the threat of the law.

"Ain't stayin' that way! _Down_!"

He immediately obeyed Grey's order, ducking as a knife whizzed over his head to stick in the shoulder of the merc he'd been trading blows with. The merc went down. "Much obliged!"

Another blade sailed past to lodge in a man's back. The man struggled to pull it out but couldn't quite reach. Jayne used the distraction Grey's knife-throwin' usually caused to slam a merc's head into a table, the table collapsing under the weight and the merc following it down.

Grey executed a high kick that struck under a man's jaw, landed, and spun into a roundhouse that caught another in the gut, the merc heaving as he went down. "Get Kaylee!"

Landing one last punch, Jayne hurried over to the mechanic, pulling her from her hiding place and toward the door as Grey kicked out a merc's knee. With Jayne's shout to hurry the hell up, Grey quickly collected her thrown blades—twisting them in the hopes of keeping the mercs down for a while longer—and rushed out the door behind them.

 _Serenity's_ crew raced down the street heading for the docks, Jayne pulling Kaylee along and Grey bringing up the rear. They were followed by the whiskey-wielding heathen with a broken nose and the merc with a now-gaping shoulder wound. Behind the mercs was a unit of Alliance officers, obviously more used to paperwork.

Jayne took a second to knock over a cart of dumplings as the owner cursing him in Mandarin and trying to salvage his wares. Grey leapt over the cart and its owner without a break in stride, hearing a crash and more curses as the mercs didn't quite make it over. She glanced back in time to see the quickest fed slip on a pile of stuffed dumplings. Grey then lengthened her stride to catch up with her crew as they neared the docks, pushing on Jayne's shoulder to get him to duck around a stack of crates waiting to be loaded.

"Do ya think... we lost 'em?" Kaylee panted, leaning heavily on the crate behind her.

Jayne motioned for her to sit. "For the moment, maybe. Grey?"

Kaylee plopped to the ground with a relieved sigh as he knelt beside her, wincing as one of his knees flared with pain. He looked over to Grey who was peeking carefully around the crates to keep an eye on the streets. He knew from her lack of answer that she was probably figuring on how best to get 'em out of this scrape. Well, how to get _Kaylee_ out of this scrape. She usually didn't take so long to make a plan though. "Grey? We good?"

Grey watched as the officers rounded the corner of a distant building. They gathered around one fed—who looked to have bits of dumpling still clinging to his uniform—as he barked out orders before splitting up and storming into various shops, likely searching for them. She turned back to Jayne, the sight of a merc leading a chained man up a ship's ramp catching her eye. "Not for long."

"Why don't it ever go smooth?" the little mechanic whined.

"Pers'nally, I blame Mal." Grey told her as she turned her attention back to her surroundings.

Jayne snorted. "Who don't?"

"Wish it'd go smooth when Kaywinnet's involved. It can go all to hell any other time, just not with her."

"Would make things simpler."

Grey was forced to agree with her brother's understatement, nodding as she watched a group of pilgrims board the same ship that the merc and his bounty had. She turned back to the street where the grid search was still going strong. "They ain't givin' up."

"We're humped!" Kaylee groaned.

Jayne pointed a stern finger at her. "Ain't humped 'til we're in chains an' on our way to slam."

"But there ain't no way we can get back to _Serenity_ like this!"

Two settlers boarded the ship she'd been watching without the least bit of trouble and Grey's eyes narrowed in thought. "Who said we were gon' try?"

The tension in Jayne's shoulders eased. "Ya got a plan?"

Grey smirked. " _Serenity_ comes to us."

"Not tryin' to doubt ya, but the planet's crawlin' with feds. No way she can get over here."

"That might be a problem iffin' I intended for us to remain dirtside."

"Not followin', mèi mei."

"We're gettin' offworld."

"But _Serenity's_ —" Kaylee started.

"Not in _Serenity_. We need to book passage on another ship. Prefer'bly one goin' to a planet what's not bein' swarmed by 'lliance feds. _Serenity'll_ pick us up there."

Kaylee grew quiet, not liking the idea of sailing in a ship that wasn't her _Serenity_.

"Got a boat in mind?" Jayne asked her.

Grey pointed to the ship she'd been keeping an eye on. " _Hunter-Gratzner_. They ain't checkin' papers. Long as we got the creds, they got the space. Saw settlers an' a group on a holy pilgrimage, so the ship's at least stoppin' at New Mecca an' some Rim planet—neither'a which'll put us in the path'a the 'lliance."

"Unless they go through an Alliance checkpoint." Jayne helpfully pointed out.

"Won't be. Pretty sure they'll be travelin' ghost lanes."

"Just how sure can ya be 'bout that?"

Her lips quirked up. "Sure as a merc is greedy."

"Don't get much surer than that." He grinned back, grateful for the guarantee. "Only see one problem with it. We don't got the coin."

"You just leave that part to me." Grey checked the coast one last time. "We need to go _now_."

The trio used the stacked crates to cover their move to the _Hunter-Gratzner_ , Grey pulling an IdentCard from a hidden pocket as they made their way up the gangplank.

"Smile polite an' let me do all the talkin'," she ordered in a whisper before handing the IdentCard to the attendant on duty. "Three, please."

Jayne mentally crossed his fingers as the attendant plugged the IdentCard into a portable cortex. The attendant pressed a few keys, frowned, and pressed the same keys again. Jayne tried not to panic as Grey looked completely unbothered by the frowning attendant, who chose that tense moment to hand the IdentCard back.

"Three for the Georgia System." The attendant's voice was a bored monotone. "Please enjoy your flight and thank you for choosing the New Oslo Shipping Corporation."

Jayne followed the girls onto the ship in relieved shock. "Where'd ya even get that, the ident an' coin enough to get us boarded?"

"You ain't the only one with friends in low places, gē ge."

"That ident gonna stand up to Alliance proddin'?"

" _Any_ proddin'," Grey assured him.

"Good 'nough for me. Let's get ourselves settled."

They entered the cryo compartment, Jayne nearly plowing into Kaylee who had frozen just inside the doorway.

"Kaylee?"

The mechanic's voice trembled. "There's cryo. Nobody said nothin' 'bout cryo. Why's there cryo?"

He exchanged a look with Grey, who pulled a face that told him she won't the right person to reassure Kaylee. "It's pretty common on passenger ships nowadays," he reminded the mechanic. "Cuts down on costs an' energy consumption. An' they ain't gotta fork out coin for rations."

Kaylee was still starting fearfully at the cryotubes. "I don't think I like cryo."

"Nobody likes cryo," Grey muttered as she studied the convict and the flashing 'Lockdown Protocol' scrolling across the front of his cryopod.

Jayne tucked Kaylee under one arm. "Ain't nothin' to worry on, Little Kaylee. 'S just like takin' a nap. Ya won't even know you're in there. Now, ship's due to take off any minute," he told her as he helped her strap into the pod, the mechanic immediately becoming drowsy. "Just sleep. We'll be landed 'fore ya know it." He waited until her eyes closed to seal the pod. "Don't ya worry 'bout a thing, Kaylee-girl. Me an' Grey won't let nothin' happen to ya."

 _They say most of your brain shuts down in cryo-sleep. All but the primitive side... the animal side. No wonder I'm still awake._

Riddick subtly shifted his weight to one side, trying to find a more comfortable position in the cryochamber. An impossible goal for someone of his size in a too-small space, but the cramp in his neck encouraged him to try. He had decided to calmly bide his time until the chance to ghost Johns and escape came along.

And it _would_ come along.

The blue-eyed devil hadn't thought to take his goggles, but it didn't make a lot of difference. All he could see were cryopods, unconscious people in cryopods, and more cryopods. Though, given the sheer number of them, it was likely Johns had booked them passage on a civilian transport, a fact he'd made plans to thoroughly exploit. Riddick tilted his head to the side, trying to focus on the sounds that would clue him in to his exact situation. It sounded like forty, forty-plus, were already asleep. His ears perked up at the sound of an Arab man's voice, some kind of hoodoo holy man praying for safe passage before strapping in.

So the ship would be stopping on New Mecca. But now he needed to know what route they'd be taking.

Riddick silently cursed the cryochamber. He could hear what was going on around him, but the curved glass walls of the chamber made it difficult to pinpoint anything's exact location.

It was starting to piss him off.

So he was forced to switch tactics. He smelled a woman. Sweat, boots, toolbelt, leather. A prospector type. And a man, his scent closely entwined with the woman's, also smelling of leather and sweat. Probably free settlers, and they only took the back roads. Johns must have thought he was clever taking an abandoned shipping lane. How wrong he was. There would be a long time between stops, a long time for something to go wrong. Riddick smirked around the bit, a sinister sight to anyone who might have spared the convict a glance.

A wisp of something sweet caught his attention, but was gone before he could do much more than decide it didn't belong on Persephone. He tilted his head up and to the sides trying to find it, confident that Johns was already under the influence of the cryo-drugs. Again, the glass interfered with his senses, hiding the scent and making its source impossible to determine.

Riddick stifled an annoyed growl. He and this cryochamber were about to have a violent disagreement.

Three sets of footsteps announced the arrival of a few last minute additions to the flight manifest. The footsteps paused just outside the compartment, two voices speaking in low tones he just could make out. There was at least one man and one woman in the group, and the woman sounded young and scared. Though he couldn't really blame her for not liking cryo. It could be a real bitch—especially for someone who wasn't affected by it.

The man smelled faintly of generic soap and a musky cologne, along with an abundance of leather, gunpowder, and steel; likely a merc or a gunhand. Given that he'd been reassuring a young woman about cryo, Riddick was leaning toward the latter. There was a woman who smelled of sunshine and cinnamon—he figured it was the same woman afraid of cryo—buried under the scents of grease, hot steel, and metal shavings. The girl was a mechanic, unusual as most mechanics were men. So it was a safe bet that this girl knew her engines. That was certainly a skill set he could find a use for, though he'd probably have to kill the gunhand to make use of it.

Do-able.

That misfit scent teased his nose again as he realized that he'd found the sweet smell he'd tried to track earlier. The last person in their group had a sort of minty vanilla scent overlaid with the smell of snow and cold. The two strangely complimented the other and most definitely belonged to a woman. He could tell that she hadn't been born on a planet like UV 6—the smell didn't run deep enough for that—but the way it was so thoroughly blended into her natural scent told him she'd spent the majority of her life on one of those ice moons. She also smelled of leather, steel, and gunpowder, thought the leather and steel were stronger on her than the man.

Interesting.

The man and woman were probably a team; that would make it a bit harder to exploit the little mechanic. But still do-able. With the fact that they were all traveling together coupled with their occupations, Riddick felt it safe to assume that they crewed on the same ship.

So why were they on _this one_?

His thoughts were interrupted when a woman moved to stand in his line of sight. As the man was busy strapping the mechanic—apparently named Little Kaylee—into a cryochamber, this had to be the woman who frequented ice planets. She had dark hair, light eyes, and wore a leather coat that would have fit him better than it did her. And the look on her face as her eyes swept over him was on the calculating side of thoughtful. It seemed he wasn't the only one who made plans in advance. Her eyes narrowed as they darted around the compartment, finally landing on the sleeping Johns. She studied the merc for a long moment, nose wrinkling as she turned back so that her gaze met his goggles, though he doubted that she knew he was looking back. One eyebrow raised as her head tilted toward Johns as though she couldn't believe that he'd let himself be caught by the sorriest excuse for a merc she'd ever laid eyes on.

To be fair, he could barely believe it himself and he'd been there for it.

Her eyes moved to his cryochamber, though he couldn't imagine what she found so fascinating about it. She was looking at something above his head when her partner took notice of her and moved so that Riddick could see him. And one look at the man told him that he might want to reconsider his plans for the mechanic. Especially if the woman making _their_ plans was even half as good as Riddick himself.

Then again, he'd seen how the woman's hand had twitched when she'd spied Johns—like she was itching to ghost him. So she'd either met the merc before or had good instincts. Either way, he might be able to work something out with the gunhands.

The woman planted a foot on the cryochamber, still looking at something above him, and tried to rock the chamber. She nodded to herself when it didn't budge—anyone could have told her it wouldn't—and moved to lean her whole weight against it.

The man just looked resigned to the situation, as though he'd stopped trying to understand her logic long ago. "Grey, what're ya doin'?"

Riddick almost laughed as the man's eyes widened comically as he recognized just who was inside the chamber his partner was shoving on and he yanked her back by the shoulder.

" _Grey_!" His voice immediately dropped to a whisper, as if speaking with any sort of volume would get him shived. "Ya don't go pushin' on Richard B. Riddick, no matter how asleep ya think he might be!"

As amusing as this was to watch, Riddick had to wonder why a _gunhand_ knew his face. Gunhands guarded cargo and people; mercs hunted bounties. While you didn't want to meet either in a dark alley—well, unless the dark gave you the upper hand—a distinct line had been drawn between the two professions. That distinction had been the driving force behind the Guild Wars a few years back, results being that gunhands would stick to gunning and mercs would stick to bounty-hunting. That was also when the government had decided that only mercs affiliated with an established guild would be recognized, something that had helped Riddick out of a few… sticky situations.

"What in the gorram are ya thinkin'?" the man continued. "Are ya _tryin'_ to get us killed?"

"I was testin' the weldin'," she told him calmly.

The gunhand looked to be about three seconds from an aneurism. "An' _why_ do ya feel the need to test the weldin'?"

Grey shrugged. "Contingency."

Well, it looked like he'd been right about her being the plan-maker.

"An' _why_ do we need a Plan B when Plan A is workin' just fine?"

The woman smacked his shoulder hard. "Chŭn huò! You just jinxed us!"

"Sorry." The man muttered, properly contrite.

"You've seen our luck, right? On a good day, we need a half dozen contingencies. Today ain't exactly shapin' up to be a good day. ' _Specially since you done gone an' jinxed us_."

"Said I was sorry."

"I swear, I'm startin' to think tauntin' Murphy must give you some kinda secret thrill."

"I don't tempt Murphy."

"Don't tempt Murphy?" she asked him. "Do I need to give you the runnin' tally'a how much trouble your mouth has brought down on us? My pers'nal favorite is 'Aw, ain't nothin' gonna go wrong, méi mei. There ain't another soul 'round for miles.' Do you remember what happened? I got shot, that's what happened!"

"Hey, what're ya complainin' for? I been shot more'n you have."

"Yeah, 'cause you're too stupid to move outtin' the way! I get shot 'cause you go an' _jinx us_!"

Riddick could honestly say that he hadn't been this amused in ages, more than once having to hold back a snort that would have proved he was awake. It was the most ridiculous argument he'd ever heard, and that they were having it at a whisper just seemed to compound the fact. But it was probably the quickly shifting facial expressions that made this the most entertaining thing he'd witnessed in years.

"An' three seconds ago, you jinxed us again! Do you wanna know what I'm gon' do to you if I get shot again a'cause a you?"

The man was unconcerned. "Think I'd rather it be a surprise."

It was like they were trying to get him to give himself away. After all, he'd seen much worse plans from mercs. At least this was fun to watch. The last call for boarders to get settled seemed to magically end the argument, forcing Riddick to wonder if it was even an argument at all. What he saw next only proved the theory.

Grey slapped a coin into the man's waiting palm. "Why is it we always get interrupted in _your_ favor?"

"'Verse just likes me better." The man grinned and tucked the coin away. "Need any help strappin' in?"

"Nah, I can manage. Fù yīn cáo."

"Ain't that the truth?"

"Thought you told Kaylee it was like takin' a nap?"

"I lied."

After that, the two separated to climb into cryochambers, though Riddick only heard one of them actually strap in. But the cryo-glass kept him from figuring out which of them preferred not to abide by standard safety regulations.

Fucking cryo-glass.

* * *

So if you've just read this and are disappointed by the addition of an OC, you probably shouldn't have skipped over the AN at the top. After all, that's where the warning was.


End file.
